The subject matter discussed in the background section should not be assumed to be prior art merely as a result of its mention in the background section. Similarly, a problem mentioned in the background section or associated with the subject matter of the background section should not be assumed to have been previously recognized in the prior art. The subject matter in the background section merely represents different approaches, which in and of themselves may also be inventions.
For many services that deliver information to human beings, such as newspapers, magazines and broadcast television, advertising is an integral component of the business model that supports the cost of delivering the information. Similarly, advertising supports the cost of information services that are provided via the Internet. Some of the mechanisms that are employed to present advertising via the Internet include banners and pop-up windows that appear within a user's browser. Advertising service exchange technologies prevalent on the Internet often require browser-based scripting languages, browser-based cookies, or server-side cookies, which need to be enabled and available for proper ad service operation. A severe problem with prior advertising exchange art may exist if any of the scripting language, browser-side cookies, or server-side cookies, are disabled or unavailable, resulting in spurious consumption of advertisers credits or complete malfunction. The lack of availability of any of these is becoming more prevalent on the Internet due primarily to security-oriented and privacy concerns. The invention solves this set of problems by eliminating these dependencies, as well as solves other problems such as a lack of performance of prior advertising exchanges' use of blockable ad technologies. This invention generates advertising that cannot be blocked from a practical perspective. This invention also solves the problem of limited inventory of prior stand-alone advertising exchanges by providing a communications foundation for interconnecting disparate and distinct, like, advertising exchanges. This invention provides a robust foundation and presentation platform extending normal advertising exchange capabilities with search-engine-like asynchronous query support. In addition, an advanced formatter and presentation system is provided allowing easy re-customization and configuration of search result presentation. The business model surrounding the invention is supported based on the sale and trade of impression credits for advertising and participation or interaction with the exchange controller embodied by this invention. Relative to search engine support operations, the invention eliminates the need for keyword bidding models prevalent on the Internet and extends search and content management capabilities to the point where paid-for or bidded keyword oriented paradigms are ultimately meaningless.